History of Chandigarh

Chandigarh, derives its name from the temple Chandi Mandir located in the vicinity of the site selected for the city. The deity 'Chandi', the goddess of power and a fort or 'garh' lying beyond the temple gave the City its name.

Chandigarh is a modern city with a pre-historic past.  The gently sloping plain on which  Chandigarh exists, was in the aeons past when the Himalayas were young, a wide lake ringed by a marsh.  The fossil remains found at the site testify to a large variety of aquatic and amphibian life which that environment supported. Some 8000 years ago Chandigarh was home to the Harappans.   Their potsherds, stone implements, ornaments and copper arrow-heads  unearthed during the excavation in 1950s and   1960s testify  this.  Area near the Church of Sector 18, Sunbeam Hotel, Sector 22 , Indira Holiday Home, Sector 24, CII Complex, Sector 31 etc. were some of the sites from where a   lot of relics of Harappans Civilization were found and excavated.  

Chandigarh was conceived as the capital of Punjab, in lieu of its lost capital of Lahore after the partition of the country in 1947. But Punjab was divided a second time in 1966, and Chandigarh is today the capital of the states of both Punjab and Haryana. However, the city does not belong to either. Chandigarh is now a Union Territory, administered by the Government of India.

Chandigarh belongs to its people. They love the city, and are proud of the quality of life it continues to provide. Chandigarh is one of the greatest experiments in urban planning and modern architecture of the twentieth century. A bold venture which came to fruition with the juxtaposition of a great vision that the India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru nurtured, and the genius of a French architect Le Corbusier and his team. Today Chandigarh is 114 square kilometers of pulsating modern town famous for its architecture and landscaping the world over. It combines elegant architectural forms with wide tree-lined avenues, green belts and gardens and offers a idyllic living experience to its residents and visitors.

Chandigarh has become synonymous with a certain kind of architecture, along with planned landscaping, not found in the older cities of India. And so we begin the story of Chandigarh.

Chandigarh was designed and constructed as the new Capital of the State of Punjab.  The second important objective was to rehabilitate the refugees from Pakistan.  The search for the new Capital began immediately after independence and by early 1948, the choice for the new Capital was finally narrowed down to three sites which came to be known in order of preference:

• Ambala site 

• Chandigarh site 

• Ludhiana site.  

The cost of acquisition for Chandigarh site was much less as compared to Ludhiana and Ambala site.  The Chandigarh site was also at a safe distance from the Pakistan border.  It was felt that instead of siting the Capital at the existing town, it would be better if a totally new town was built for that purpose.  The Government of Punjab in consultation with Government of India in March, 1948 selected the Chandigarh site which was located in the Kharar Tehsil of Ambala District. 

The city was to be built in two phases over an area of 28000 acres of land in 58 villages.  A total of 21000 persons or about 6228 families were likely to be affected.  The local people vehemently opposed to the idea of the New City.  They formed Anti Rajdhani Committee (Anti Capital Committee) and protested against the Government move to site the new Capital here.  The work proceeded at slow pace for about two years.  It was only in December, 1949 that the Architect was selected and the government reached the final decision of constructing the capital at the Chandigarh site.  The early development of the City was guided by Shri P.N. Thapar, a member of Indian Civil Services who became Administrative head of the Capital Project in 1949 and Shri P.L. Varma, Chief Engineer of Punjab.

Although eager to build a new capital that would compensate for the loss of Lahore, the Indians were nevertheless poorly equipped to carry out their intention.  Administered by a large and sophisticated bureaucracy trained in the impersonal idiom of colonial rule, India was still woefully inexperienced in technical areas.  Architectural schools were virtually nonexistent, indigenous architectural tradition had practically faded and local craft skills were visibly on the decline. Initially, the Government of Punjab approached American town planner Albert Mayer who along with architect Matthew Nowicki became the key planners for the new city. Albert Mayer was appointed as project architect on 28/12/1949. 

Albert Mayer was a Graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and he started his career as a Civil Engineer.  World War II brought Mayer to India as a United States Army Civil Engineer.  He built airfields in Bengal.  After the end of World War, he started his Indian career by proposing to build model villages to the new Government of Pandit Nehru.  He built some villages in Etawah district of Uttar Pradesh . The master plan conceived for chandigarh by the American team had a fan-shaped outline filling the site between the two seasonal river-beds. The plan also had the sectors concept which in this case were called Super Blocks.  Each Super Block was divided into three parts, the middle part of which was devoted to the provision of public amenities like shopping, recreation, education and health. At the northern edge of the city was the Capitol Complex against the panoramic back drop of the Shivalik hills. The City Centre was sited in the middle, and two linear parklands ran from the northeast to the southwest. Mayer sought to create a self-sufficient city, restricted in size and surrounded by green belts. Areas were clearly demarcated for business, industry and cultural activities. On 31/8/1950, his co-planner Nowicki died in a plane crash and Mayer could not continue the work.

This vision of Chandigarh, contained in the innumerable conceptual maps on the drawing board together with notes and sketches had to be translated into brick and mortar. Administrator P N Thapar and Chief Engineer P L Varma then went to Europe to look for a substitute.  Le Corbusier, eminent architect and urban theorist, was finally selected (20/12/1950) to carry forward this task. Le Corbusier was to be the author of the master plan and the designer of the principal buildings.  The rest of the work was to be carried out by a team of three foreign architects, who would be stationed in Chandigarh.  They were Maxwell Fry, his wife Jane Drew and Corbusier's cousin Pierre Jeanneret.

He retained many aspects of the original concepts and its components : the Capitol and the City Centre, besides the University, Industrial area, and linear parkland. Even the neighbourhood unit was retained as the basic module of planning. However, the curving outline of Mayer and Nowicki was reorganised into a mesh of rectangles, and the buildings were characterised by an 'honesty of materials'. Exposed brick and boulder stone masonry in its rough form produced unfinished concrete surfaces, in geometrical structures. This became the architectural form characteristic of Chandigarh, set amidst landscaped gardens and parks.

The revised master plan was finalised in early 1951 and the work on the sites began soon after. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru laid the foundation stone  of Chandigarh on 02/04/1952 at a spot which is now in Sector 9.  The earliest activities were building of roads and laying of service infrastructure.  The earliest permanent constructions were pockets of all categories of government houses spread out all over the City. Included in this phase were shops, schools for various age groups, a health centre, a cinema and a swimming pool and Maxwell Fry's government press. Sector 22 with all its facilities and variety of type designs was developed earliest to serve as the model neighbourhood.  In the absence of City Centre, it soon became the cultural focus of the City.

The capital of Punjab was officially shifted from Shimla to Chandigarh on 21/9/1953. The President of India Dr. Rajendra Parsad inaugurated the City on 7/10/1953.

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